by Maggie Wells
Chapter Seventeen
The creak of hinges caught Ben’s attention. Marlee saw his head pop up. A half second later, a gun was pointed in her direction. “Police. Freeze.”
“Ben, it’s me,” Marlee called into the room. “What’s happening? Are you hurt? We heard you shouting, then nothing.”
“I’m fine. Don’t come in here,” he snapped, lowering his weapon again. “Go flag down the others. I need an ambulance. And the coroner. Get Schuler,” he added.
“Is someone hurt or dead?”
“No! Do not come in,” he shouted. “This is an active crime scene!” His voice shook with exertion. Whoever was on the sofa made a gurgling, gaspy sound, regaining Ben’s full attention.
“Stay with me, Thomason,” he ordered. “I need you to stay with me.”
Will. Will Thomason was on the couch and gravely injured. She stood frozen in the doorway, her heart in her throat as she strained to make out what the injured man was saying. “Gree-ee,” the other man murmured as his eyes slid shut. “He caugh ’em. Yuhn, Abernaf-ee.”
Ben pounced on the gibberish. “He caught them skimming? What about you? Why you? Why Jeff Masters?”
The man’s breathing became even more shallow, each inhalation labored. Ben was losing him. He looked up at Marlee, his gaze imploring. “Ambulance?”
Try as she might, she heard no sirens approaching. The look of desperation on Ben’s face spoke volumes. If Thomason went, he’d be taking a whole boatload of secrets with him.
“Hang on,” Ben repeated to Will, his voice shredding. “We need you, damn it.”
Half a minute passed in deafening silence until, at last, the distant wail of a siren carried on the wind. “Here they come,” she reassured him.
Ben’s shoulders sagged, and he let out a shuddering breath. “Too late. Damn it,” he cursed.
“Ben?” she called out as the blare of multiple sirens drew closer.
“He’s dead.” The pronouncement came out hard and flat. “And so’s Baker.”
She flinched when he raised a blood-soaked hand to gesture toward the space between the sofa and the television, but from her angle, Marlee couldn’t see anyone else. “Baker?”
“Appears they shot each other.”
He rocked back and holstered his weapon, oblivious to the blood. Marlee averted her eyes, her own clean hand flying to her mouth and pressing firmly to trap whatever it was rising up inside her. A scream? A moan? It wasn’t important. Ben didn’t need to hear it right now. Not when he’d fought so hard to get at least one person out of there alive.
Tires skidded to a halt outside the cabin. Marlee saw a deputy’s cruiser and an ambulance parked close to the cabin. She ran for the door, suddenly remembering Ben’s car and worried they couldn’t get through. Then she spotted the SUV pulled up next to the woodpile. She started toward the approaching vehicles when she spotted her father in the sheriff’s SUV, slumped over the steering wheel.
While Lori and the paramedics raced past her to the front door, Marlee picked her way down the prefabricated steps and crossed the thick carpet of fallen pine needles to the SUV. “Daddy? What’s wrong?” she called out as she approached. The windows were up; he might not have heard her. Reaching for the door handle, she peered through the tinted glass and her stomach dropped to her toes.
“Daddy?” she cried, yanking the door open. To her relief, Henry fell back against the seat rather than into her arms. She gave him a quick once-over and, seeing no blood, asked again, “What’s wrong?”
Henry’s mouth moved soundlessly. His eyes were wide and scared. Her stomach sank as she saw the gleam of a thin sheen of perspiration on his forehead. The left side of his face seemed to sag.
“Oh, no,” she said, running her hand over his damp forehead. “Oh. Oh, Daddy,” she managed, though a hot rush of tears strangled her. Something she’d read in an article somewhere popped into her mind. “Daddy? Can you smile for me?” she prompted, her voice as tremulous as her own attempt to demonstrate.
When only the right corner of his mouth moved, she leaned in and pressed her lips to the slack skin of his left cheek. “Right. Okay. Okay,” she whispered. “Don’t you move.” She made sure he was propped upright in the seat. Keeping her voice as light as she could manage, she nodded a shade too enthusiastically. “Stay here. I’m gonna go get some help.”
Closing the door behind her so he couldn’t fall out, Marlee sprinted across the scraggy yard for the back door. This time, she didn’t stop at the threshold.
“Help. I need help,” she cried as she skidded across the laminate floor.
Ben sprang to his feet, reaching out to catch her, but she shied away, freaked out by the blood drying on his hands. “Help. It’s Daddy,” she panted, shifting her attention to the paramedics who were hovering over Jared Baker’s inert body. “I think he’s having a stroke.” The two men looked at Ben, and she snapped, “He’s alive, but he needs help now!”
Ben jerked a nod, and the two men grabbed their equipment and followed her out the back door. Within minutes, they had her father strapped onto a gurney, an oxygen mask over his drooping face, and were wheeling him across the tree roots to the back door of the ambulance. While they were loading him in, Mel Schuler pulled to a halt beside them.
“I thought Lori radioed two dead?” he called out to them. “Miss Marlee, what’s going on?”
One of the paramedics waved her into the ambulance. “Two inside. We have a live one, but he’s showing signs of stroke, possibly hemorrhagic.”
“Good God.” Mel threw open his car door and scrambled after Marlee, squinting into the ambulance as the paramedic made sure they were secured for the race to the hospital. “Miss Marlee, is that your daddy?”
She nodded but could make no words come out.
The paramedic shot Mel an annoyed glance as he moved to pull the doors closed behind him. “We have to roll. We’re heading straight to Putney Memorial in Albany.”
“I’ll call someone to get Carolee,” the coroner/ funeral director called after them.
The door slammed shut, and the man tending to her father called out, “Hit it.”
* * *
BEN SAT OUT in the general waiting area at Putney Memorial. Hours had passed since the ambulance containing Marlee and her father had sped away. He’d sent Lori ahead to check on them, but he’d been tied up waiting for the crime lab technicians to finish up, giving a statement to the Prescott County Sheriff—since Thomason’s land was technically on the other side of the county line bisecting the lake—and waiting for Mel Schuler to transport the bodies.
He’d dragged himself home then, all too aware he looked like an extra from a horror movie and wondering if the sight of him covered in Will Thomason’s blood would be the only way Marlee Masters would ever see him now.
For months after the shootout in the abandoned warehouse, he’d only been able to picture the sick glee on Andre’s face as he lifted his assault rifle and sprayed the agents swarming through the door with bullets. All traces of the boy he’d loved as a brother were wiped away. All he could see clearly was the expression of stunned betrayal his friend wore when he’d seen Ben’s gun pointing at him.
It took over a year for Ben to be able to conjure any other images of his lifelong friend. Still, those gut-wrenching scenes played out in his dreams. Not once did he envision them shooting hoops or hanging out on his grandmother’s porch.
Would it be the same for Marlee? Would she look at him and only see blood and destruction? God, he hoped not. But even scrubbed clean and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he still felt dirty. Because he was tied into this. Had their lives been on a collision course? One set off by men driven by greed, power and vengeance?
Propping his elbows on his knees, he rubbed his hands together and let his head fall forward. Would she figure out how long it had taken him to scrub his cuti
cles clean? If she hugged him, would she smell the coppery scent of blood? His own nostrils were clogged with it.
He’d had to be tested. A Prescott County paramedic had rambled on and on about the dangers of blood-borne pathogens as he poked at Ben’s veins. There was no use trying to explain to the kid there’d been no time to pull on a pair of latex gloves, even if he’d had some handy.
“Ben?”
His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. He shot from the chair and covered the ground between them in three long strides. But then he drew up short. She looked worn and worried, and the last thing he wanted was to push himself on her.
“Hey,” he croaked. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “How’s your dad?”
She drew a shaky breath, then let it go as she flung herself into his arms. He caught her and held her as a hard, wrenching sob broke from her chest. Ben squeezed his eyes shut, his initial rush of relief swallowed up by sympathy as he leaped to the worst-possible conclusion.
Burying his hand in her hair, he gently massaged her nape. “I’m so sorry.” He pressed kisses to the top of her head, and she cried harder, tears gushing from her eyes and soaking the front of his clean shirt. “Oh, Marlee,” he whispered into her hair. “Marlee.”
She pressed into him, and if he could have absorbed all her pain, he would have. Because he loved her in spite of his every effort not to.
“He’s okay,” she said at last.
Her voice was so muffled by his shirt, for a minute Ben wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Yeah?”
“I mean—” she peeled herself away enough to look up at him “—he will be. We got him here fast, and they were able to get him prepped for treatment on the way. It was ischemic rather than hemorrhagic, so they’re treating it intravenously. They think the clot is dissolving.”
He hugged her tighter, unwilling to let her go once she’d come to him. “Good. That’s good.”
“He’s asleep now, but he was alert earlier. Seemed to recognize me and my mom. Eleanor Young drove her here,” she explained. “They’re in with him now.”
She tightened her arms around him, and Ben had to bite back a shout of relief. She was holding him as much as he was holding her. “Good. That’s good,” he repeated. Then, catching himself, he pressed his cheek to her hair and let out a sigh. “Sorry. I’m so glad you were glad to see me,” he confessed in a rough voice.
“What?”
She tried to rear back to look at him, but he clamped a hand to her head and pressed her to his chest. “No, don’t. Just stay.”
Just stay. Two simple, seemingly innocent words. But he wanted her to do more than stay pressed up against his chest. He wanted her to stay here in Pine Bluff. With him.
To his delight, she reclaimed her spot with a hum of pleasure. “I should be asking about what went on out there, but I don’t want to,” she said, her voice husky. “Not right now.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. Plenty of time to sort it all out later.” He stroked her hair, tangling his fingers in the thick locks and combing them through to the ends. “How’s your mother handling things?”
Marlee chuckled as she ran the tips of her fingers up and down his spine. He curled himself around her, wanting to remain cocooned in the embrace as long as possible.
“She’s handling things surprisingly well.” She pressed her lips to the base of his throat, and he stilled. “I have a sneaking suspicion she’s been waiting for the moment she could be in charge all along.”
Snorting, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I don’t doubt it.”
She gave his torso another squeeze but didn’t relinquish her hold on him. They stood wrapped up in each other in the empty waiting area for several minutes. When they finally broke the silence, they spoke at once.
“Don’t go—” he started, his voice low and urgent.
“I’ve been thinking—” she began.
They laughed, then separated enough to be able to look one another square in the eye. “You first,” she said with a nod.
But he’d said all he wanted to say in those two words. He hadn’t had a chance to think of a convincing argument beyond them. At least, not one good enough to put to a lawyer.
“No, you go ahead,” he prompted. “What have you been thinking?”
“Well,” she began, her voice tentative as her hold on his back slipped. “It occurred to me you have more options now. I mean, with Ivan gone, and the others.” She ducked her head and cleared her throat. When she looked up at him again, she wore her overbright smile. It clashed with the sadness in her eyes. “You might go back to Atlanta. Maybe get your job back with the agency.”
He searched those beautiful blue eyes for a clue as to what was going on behind them, but she wore her poker face. Her lawyer face. She gave nothing away. Then again, if she didn’t want him, would she have thrown herself into his arms? Sure, they’d been partners of a sort, but if she were truly done with him, she could have sent him off with a handshake and a hearty, “Thanks for your help, Sheriff.”
“I’m not going back to Atlanta.” The rough rumble of his voice was unrecognizable to his own ears. “And I don’t want you to either.”
“You want to stay here?”
He nodded. “Yes. And I want you to stay here. I want you to want to stay here,” he amended. “I want you to stay with me.”
She beamed, and this time her sparkle shone brighter than the summer sun. “You do?”
“I want to stay here. It’s nice knowing people’s names, and I want them to know mine.”
“Well, right now they think your name is Sheriff,” she teased.
“That’s not how it will be listed on the ballot this fall,” he said gruffly. “I’m hoping by then, at least some of them will come to call me Ben.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Tangling his fingers in her hair, he tugged lightly to get her attention. “Listen, I understand how you’ve always wanted to get out of here, but I think things could be different than you expect. They are going to be different. Your dad isn’t going to be up and at it anytime soon, and with Will—”
She nodded, her expression solemn. “Don’t forget, Wendell’s retiring and planning to run for a seat on the bench.”
“You’re needed here, Marlee. I need you here,” he stated, laying it all out on the line. “Somehow, I’ve tripped all over my good intentions and fallen in love with you. Now, I’m going to show you what a selfish jerk I am and ask you to stay here with me. Stay here for me,” he said, unable to erase the pleading note from his voice.
A peachy-pink blush tinged her cheeks. He took it as a good sign. Evidence that she approved of what she was hearing. When she tried to burrow back into his chest, he caught her chin and tipped it up so she could look him straight in the eye. “I love you, Marlee Masters.”
“I’ve done nothing but stir up trouble since I came back to town.”
“I noticed,” he answered gruffly.
“Pine Bluff is a mess. Timber Masters is going to be a mess.”
He nodded. “Yes to both messes.”
“I shouldn’t want any part of this,” she argued.
The color in her cheeks deepened, and a surge of heat rushed through him as he realized her eyes were growing bright with unshed tears. “But you do. You want me.”
“I do,” she said softly.
Gathering her close once more, he fisted his fingers in her hair and planted a long, lingering kiss on her, bending her back to make sure she knew he meant it.
He broke the kiss, breathless. “Do you love me too?”
She gave a huff of a laugh, then kissed him again. “I can’t believe you have to ask. I shared my onion rings with you.”
“Say the words, Marlee. I need to hear them once. Then you can go on teasing me for the rest of your life.”
&
nbsp; Unwinding her arms from his waist, she wrapped them around his neck and pulled him down until their foreheads touched. “I love you, Ben Kinsella. And, because I don’t want you to feel you have to ask for my love ever again, I plan to give you all the evidence of that you’ll ever need.”
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Cold Case at Cardwell Ranch by B.J. Daniels.
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Cold Case at Cardwell Ranch
by B.J. Daniels
Chapter One
The wind whipped around him, kicking up dust and threatening to send his Stetson flying. Cold-case detective Waco Johnson cautiously approached the weatherworn boards that had blown off the opening of the old abandoned well.
The Montana landscape was riddled with places like this one, abandoned homesteads slowly disappearing along with those who had worked this land.
He hesitated a few feet from the hole, feeling a chill even on this warm Montana summer afternoon. Nearby, overgrown weeds and bushes enveloped the original homestead dwelling, choking off any light. Only one blank dusty window peered out at him from the dark gloom inside. Closer, pine trees swayed, boughs emitting a lonely moan as they cast long, jittery shadows over the century-old cemetery with its sun-bleached stone markers on the rise next to the house. A rusted metal gate creaked restlessly in the wind, a grating sound that made his teeth ache.
It added to his anxiety about what he was about to find. Or why being here nudged at a memory he couldn’t quite grasp.
He glanced toward the shadowed gaping hole of the old well for a moment before pulling his flashlight from his coat pocket and edging closer.
The weathered boards that had once covered the opening had rotted away over time. Weeds had grown up around the base. He could see where someone had trampled the growth at one edge to look inside. The anonymous caller who’d reported seeing something at the bottom of the well? That begged the question: How had the caller even seen the abandoned well’s opening, given the overgrowth?
